INHERITING INCONTINENCE: Women are more likely to develop urinary incontinence if their mothers or older sisters are incontinent, a new study has indicated.
The research team investigated the risk of urinary incontinence in the daughters, granddaughters and sisters of over 2,000 incontinent women compared to the risk for almost 6,000 women with continent relatives. Daughters of mothers with urinary incontinence had a 1.3-fold risk of being incontinent. If mothers had severe symptoms, their daughters had a 2-fold risk of such symptoms.Female siblings had a 1.6-fold increased risk of urinary incontinence if their older sisters were incontinent. The familial risk was for symptoms of both stress and urge incontinence.
KNEE SURGERY: Older people and the poor are less likely to have knee replacement surgery, although their need is often greater than that of younger, more affluent people, according to a study carried out in the North of England. The findings are based on a survey of a sample of 15,000 people aged 65 and over. Only 6.4 per cent of patients had the surgery 18 months after being listed for it. People who were poor were twice as likely to need the surgery as their more affluent peers.
REDUCING BREAST CANCER: Eating more soy-rich foods could reduce the spread of breast cancer, according to researchers at the University of Ulster. "In our study we used cell cultures to examine the effects of isoflavones this_is_a_left_sq_bracketnatural hormone-like compounds found in soy] on the invasion of breast cancer cells. The isoflavones exerted potent inhibitory effects on breast cancer cell invasion even at concentrations similar to those found in South East Asian diets," explained Dr Pamela Magee from the School of Biomedical Sciences. "These findings seem to indicate that eating a soy-rich products such as soy milk, soy drinks and desserts could have an important role in preventing the spread of cancer cells in the body."
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